I have been delaying switching to iPhoto on OSX. A quick experiment had shown that the overhead (actual storage / bare file storage) is too high, although I do not have a concrete number to mention at this time.

Now that I have an iPad, I am stumped by how to get my photos onto the iPad by a simple file copy. Do you have an opinion one way or the other? Did you for instance find a decent way to get your photo library onto the iPad without first handing the photos to iPhoto? Or did you find that the overhead of iPhoto is tolerable in the long run?

Thanks for the drop-box hint. I'm looking at it. About the camera connection kit: what if I leave my SD card cleared regularly and I don't want the hassle to interface with this and that camera? Can I not use the ordinary iPad cable to fetch the files from a macbook?
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CalafMar 18 '12 at 0:40

I don't have iPhoto on my iPad to test - but if you plug in your iPad, and look under apps it'll show you which apps allow file transfer. Also, with iCloud, if you take photos on your phone they'll be added to the iPad. If you want you can also use the Photos tab for your iPad setup in iTunes to choose a folder of photos to sync onto the device.
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AlexMar 18 '12 at 4:24

The Photos tab does it, storing the higher-resolution photos. At some point it will be handy to know how to choose, manually, which pictures to keep in hi-res on the iPad, and which ones to keep downsampled to ~2048x1536. Perhaps iPhoto already makes this possible?
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CalafMar 18 '12 at 20:58

The third item in your answer is what I was looking for, in the category of "simple file copy", as opposed to getting another gizmo or going through the ether.
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CalafApr 6 '12 at 20:52